


Like In Kind

by inveigler81



Category: Le Pacte des Loups | Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-18
Updated: 2007-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 09:13:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1643390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inveigler81/pseuds/inveigler81
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sylvia presses Fronsac about his true nature as he draws her portrait.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like In Kind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for brynwulf

 

 

She lay still now, languidly across the bed, utterly comfortable in her nakedness. More than comfortable, it seemed to imbue her with an aura of strength and confidence more apparent than when she was clothed. He sat across from her, equally naked, tracing an eye over the beautiful proportions of her curvature as he committed them to parchment. His body still sheathed in sweat, small rivulets of it coursing slow lines down his brow and the cleft of his spine.

"How are things faring with the wallflower?" She put to him with a slight barb to her tone.

"I assume you mean Marianne?" The corners of his mouth formed the smallest pique of a smile as he looked up from his work. She tilted her head in acquiescence, a gesture that only belied the slightest hint of distain. "As well as can be expected," he exhaled as he smoothed in a shadow with his thumb.

"Meaning what exactly? That she hasn't taken to your boyish charms?" She went on with only a hint of mockery.

"As well as you?" He countered.

"I have done no such thing, for that, a good deal more money would need to change hands." He often wondered whether it were humanly possible to provoke outrage from Sylvia.

"You take nothing from these experiences?" He was surprised to find the answer mattered to him.

"I take what I like, as do you," The rise of her breast betrayed discomfort, something she masked by toying with the knife with which she delighted in wounding him.

"Are you under the mistaken impression that I'm some form of thief?" He tried to lighten the tone, the freshest cut bristling below his breast.

"No, you're many things worse, many shades darker than that," she replied directly, penetratingly so. "Though I wonder whether you were born to it or whether something changed you," her voice grew lighter but her implications did not.

It had not been his idea to slaughter the wolves in their den, young and as underdeveloped as he was that year. The thought and remembrance of it repulsed him and a reviling flame of self-loathing teased its way though his person. His friends had drawn him along under pretence of protecting some far-flung cattle but his own will had offered precious little protest.

They had been caught up in that casual sadism that is the mob mentality of boys. He had felt numb and hollowed out after. The clinical side of his nature expressed an ill-timed interest in the remains and inner workings of the poor creatures that lay before him. His spirit though had quailed at the wholly unnecessary and bitter tainted waste. His cohorts had mercilessly taunted his tears, though he would have willingly borne such mockery a lifetime if he could have breathed life back into the noble wraiths that once stalked that wood.

"You're a killer Fronsac, cold and clean and calculating. You labour under the delusion that it's some small part of you, your nature, that you can keep locked in a little box, hidden away." She had taken his silent reflection as some form of admission. There was something in the cadence of her voice, the closeness of this place, the sputtering half-light, the wash of scents. He half wondered if her jests of poisons and potions were, in fact, true.

The snow had been falling in long, slow drifts and the thrill of the hunt had been on him. He never realised the deal he brokered even as a boy when he squeezed that trigger and knowingly took a life. The bandits  
had struck down his father, catching him off-guard as he focussed on their prey. They were either unaware of Fronsac or reckoned on his fleeing before them, the lifeblood that scarred the snow scarlet told otherwise.

It was fitting really as all other colour leeched away and time held its breath in that moment, as this newfound whispering darkness took a hold. He had stood there, as though his life stretched away before him, with the knowing feeling that this would be the way of things, that this would happen again and more times than he cared to know.

"So I'm to be a deluded thief then?" He asked pointedly, shrugging away the unwanted recollections she was somehow conjuring from him. Then a thought occurred to him that couldn't help but make him smile.

"Something funny?"

"The portraits. Mani's people believed that being captured in an image would rob them of their souls." He nodded at the book of artwork next to her, entangled in the sheet.

"And did it?" He thought it an odd question but it ran along the lines of his own thoughts.

"In some small way...yes," he nodded.

"What happened to them?"

"Most likely dead and gone by now," he shrugged.

"Though they live on through your pictures," It was more a statement than a question.

"I suppose they do," he shook his head and returned his focus to the job at hand, hoping the carnal draw of the beauty before him would chase away some of these poignant little details.

"Lost souls," she pressed.

"Ghosts more like," he sniffed a half a laugh and continued in silence for a time, the only sound the breath of candles and the distant sound of ambient music.

"You really think that she is the woman for you?" Her eyes glittered darkly as she returned to her earlier questioning.

"You imply that you are?" He taunted.

"You flatter yourself overmuch," she answered dismissively.

"Marianne is..." He began and thoughts of her impish beauty, her untempered spirit brought an unbidden smile to his face, albeit a wistful one. Sylvia read something in that expression, something she seemed to be delighting in tearing down.

"And yet you hide from her, hide your true nature, what would she think of you if she knew all that you were capable of?" She asked almost coldly.

"Where do these fantastical notions of yours come from?" He was growing somewhat exasperated.

"You cannot hide from me,"

"Then perhaps you'd have better sport with Mani," he threw up a charcoal smirched hand.

"He is at one with what he is. If he is a killer it is only to restore order, honour, balance. He is an open thing of beauty...honest. And yet you drag him about the globe on your childish fools errands," she added reproachfully.

"Mani goes where he chooses, he always has," Fronsac shrugged.

"Blind as well as deluded. His care for you runs deep,"

There was truth in that. Thoughts of their escape from the British were visceral, living things, seered across his memories. The biting rain; the oppressive, cloying blackness; the cadaverous stink of old mud and rotting wounds. The night was punctuated by the storm, the flickers of lightning and the crack of thunder close upon them masked the first of the gunfire. The world around him erupted in flashes, the storm, the blaze of muskets, everything rendered in stark relief. Mani must have foreseen it, most likely he smelt them coming a mile away, his body and face now sheathed in black paint, his eyes twin shards of unnerving calm.

The battle had raged close and thick and violent, his aim had been poor and his leg wounded by a bayonet. Mani saved his life twiceover and took unnecessary wounds into the bargain. He moved with such terrifying speed and grace it were as though the shadows themselves had come alive and sprouted talons and fangs. He drew of their enemy blood far deeper and darker than the impractical colour of their coats as the two of them fled into that carnivorous night.

Being taught to fight as Mani did had made Fronsac regret the request, such an ordeal it proved to be. Being told with patience that felt like mockery to master his feelings and be at one with the spirits about him as he was beaten down time and again, blundered bodily into tree trunks and coughed  
out mouthfuls of grass and soil proved taxing indeed. Other things came more readily, being taught the uses of every aspect and essence of the body of an animal from its hair to its hooves had helped expunge some of his childhood remorse.

He never came to share Mani's personal religious convictions but envied him their seeming liberation. Mani was at one with the world around him, at peace even in the clutch of chaos. He feigned indifference to his prowess but Fronsac had seen the slightest play of a smile upon those lips more than once and knew it was as close a thing to self-satisfaction as he would ever allow himself.

"So what if I am a killer? What of it? It is not a thing of which to be proud," Fronsac stated plainly, now determined to catch some of her inherent insolence in the eyes of his work.

"Granted, but it is a thing, when buried, that will eat you alive." He wasn't sure if it was for the sake of emphasis that her tongue wet her lips

"Remind me again how it is you know so much of such things," half a smile returning to his face.

"You mightn't wish me to touch you again with my hands so unclean," she almost laughed as she sat up on the edge of the bed, arching her back

"And Jean-Francois?" He asked suddenly and it were as if the air were momentarily drawn away.

"He is a dispicable and pitiable thing," she uttered with disgust.

"You speak so fondly of darkness and so sourly of him," it intrigued him.

"Perhaps you're not so bad afterall," Sylvia smiled thinly as she stood up.

"And why do you say that?" He asked, somewhat confused.

"You have no recognition of the things of which he is truly capable," she answered as she came to stand before him.

"Is there nothing good of which I am capable?" He asked leadingly as he set aside his drawing and allowed himself to be ensnared, his eyes feeding hungrily on the proximity of her lascivious form.

"I'm sure that we may find something...provided enough practice," she breathed as she drew him from the chair with the crook of a finger and all remembrance was swiftly lost in the enfolding embrace of her body and her bed.

 


End file.
